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Arctic tour: Stephen Harper acknowledges social issues in Canada’s North

Prime Minister Stephen Harper shifted his political message in the North Thursday after he met Nunavut Premier Eve Aariak and faced media questions about the immense social challenges here.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, kneeling, is joined by Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, left, and Harper's wife, Laureen, second from left, Denis St-Onge, retired Geological Survey of Canada scientist, second from right, and Donna Kirkwood, director general at Geological Survey of Canada, as they examine some of the geological features of Rankin Inlet. (CHRIS WATTIE / REUTERS)

RANKIN INLET, NUNAVUT—On a day he intended to highlight more money for mining development, Prime Minister Stephen Harper shifted his political message in the North after he met Nunavut Premier Eve Aariak and faced media questions about the immense social challenges here.

Those had largely gone unmentioned by the prime minister during his eighth annual Arctic tour. Instead it has focused on resource development and Arctic sovereignty.

Thursday was also supposed to boost the prime minister’s credentials as a supporter of basic science.

In Rankin Inlet, on the northwest coast of Hudson’s Bay, Harper, who is frequently criticized for failing to back scientific research and accused of muzzling scientists, threw his weight behind a major geological research project and brought geologists along to tell everyone about it.

The Conservative government will extend for another seven years a $100-million program that was begun in 2008 and due to end this year. The same amount of money will now stretch over the extension.

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Its goal is to complete the geological mapping of Canada’s North by 2020 — a move Harper promised would boost mineral exploration and development, bringing jobs to places like Rankin Inlet.

But in a territory where housing needs are overwhelming, family violence clogs courts, and a major study says the suicide rate has stubbornly remained about 10 times the national average for the past 40 years, the social problems are overwhelming.

Nunavut reporters asked the prime minister if he’s left social problems up to the territorial governments, or if he thinks economic development will naturally bring social development along with it.

Harper said: “I think that is both true and not true.”

Economic development is “critical to social development” and can help provide flows of private money “which can be, frankly, much greater than governments can ever create.”

He said creating jobs and opportunities for people “are important objectives in their own right” and added governments will continue to provide a range of social services, such as health and education. “But I think the most important thing for economic development is to give people jobs and opportunities.”

The geo-mapping money was welcomed by Aariak.

The premier told reporters it was needed, and she appreciated the $100 million in the last federal budget for 250 housing units, but the needs of Nunavut are so great, Ottawa must invest more in its basic infrastructure.

A study showed Nunavut needs 3,000 housing units immediately, and 90 units built each year for 10 years just to keep pace with its population growth. More than half Nunavut’s population is under age 25.

She linked it directly to many other social challenges: “Suicide, drop-out rates at the high school, health issues are all connected to lack of housing, lack of infrastructure. Everything is connected. If a child is living under a roof where there is a space to do her studies, and well-rested and well-fed, just imagine how far that child can go.”

Aariak said the government of Nunavut cannot do it alone “because the money that we get from the federal government is enough to run our territory but not necessarily to develop it.”

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami president Terry Audla spoke to reporters, with PMO advisers listening in, and said Inuit welcome resource development and have long been concerned about “how can we slow those sad numbers. We’re number one for all the wrong reasons: highest suicide rates, highest drop out rates.”

“I’ve heard (the prime minister) use the phrase a rising tide will raise all boats. I’m confident that if resource development is done in consultation with Inuit . . . and Inuit are at the steering wheel, if that happens, in my opinion the social ills that we face right now hopefully will be diminished.”

Audla then headed into a meeting of Inuit leaders with Harper.

Cameras recorded the beginning of the encounter. Billed as merely a photo opportunity, Harper now had a different goal in mind — to communicate concern for all people here, not just resource developers.

“We have all shared goals in seeing strong, healthy and prosperous Inuit families and communities,” said Harper.

“We see progress being made, we also recognize there are also big changes in terms of the rapidity of historic development, stresses on the environment, social challenges that we all have, but I think everybody here today is extremely positive about the potential opportunities for the next generation of young Inuit people.”

After the meeting, which ran four hours, Audla said he felt Harper understood their concerns. He said Harper agreed the Inuit population often falls through cracks, especially with all the jurisdictions involved, including three territories, northern Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Later the PMO issued a summary saying they “agreed to continue working together to identify concrete measures that will contribute to improving Inuit business readiness, and to fostering partnerships with other levels of government and the private sector.”

Weather later prevented Harper from going to nearby Marble Island to look at the local geology there. On Friday, his last day in the north, he travels to Raglan Mine, in northern Quebec in the Inuit territory known as Nunavik.

The government’s geo-mapping initiative identifies what areas to map with an eye on promoting mining development.

Called Geo-Mapping for Energy and Minerals (GEM), the surveys are conducted in consultation with provinces, industry, and aboriginal groups.

It is a crucial program, say all sides.

“People are still using geo-science information that was done at the turn of the last century — the 1900s,” said Ross Gallinger, head of Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, who flew from Toronto to hear Harper’s remarks.

He said it will drive some $500 million worth of mining exploration in the coming years. But he added there are public uses for the information beyond private interests. “There are all kinds of uses for it, public land use, aboriginal land claims, environmental assessment and public health and safety.”

Dr. Denis St-Onge, retired Geological Survey of Canada scientist, said academic researchers at universities do not have the resources and support necessary to undertake the kind of detailed probes in remote areas that are required, and industry itself does not do this kind of work because of its enormous costs with no guarantee of a mineral strike.

“Google Earth shows topography and landscape forms. It doesn’t show you the composition of rocks. You have to be on the ground with a hammer,” he said, with a grin.

The nitty-gritty hard work of bringing in geologists by helicopter to remote regions to sample and analyze the rocks and point the way to potential mineral deposits worth exploring is done by public servants.

St-Onge said only 40 per cent of Canada is mapped to an “appropriate” level, considered to be a scale of 1-250:000 — or 1 cm for every 500 metres — with vast swaths of the country, especially the North, just generally surveyed. He said seven years won’t complete the mapping of all of Canada, but the North “is possible.”

Harper said the program so far has produced more than 700 maps and reports and “as direct consequence, private investors are now looking for nickel on the Melville Peninsula, searching for diamonds on Baffin Island, and copper, silver and gold deposits have been found in Yukon.”

“Some of these maps show where gold, silver, cobalt and diamond may be found, just over an hour north of here, by helicopter.”

Correction - August 23, 2013:
This article was edited from a previous version that included a photo caption that mistakenely referred to Donna Kirkwood as a geologist at the Geological Survey of Canada. As well, the article did not indicate that Denis St-Onge is currently a retired scientist from the Geological Survey of Canada.

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